EVENTS

Feminism has gone Too Far

Apparently a guy called Peter Lloyd has for some reason gone to the trouble of writing a book that Christina Hoff Sommers wrote several years ago. I wonder what the point of that is.

spiked doesn’t though, spiked is all agog. spiked just can’t get enough of people saying edgy things like “well really when you get right down to it it’s men who are second-class citizens these days.”

Lloyd, who somehow combines writing for both the Daily Mail and the ‘women in leadership’ section of the Guardian, was prompted to write Stand By Your Manhood in response to the ‘dismissive, patronising and skewed narrative about heterosexual men’, which he suggests is apparent in the mainstream media.

He argues that it has become normal to consider masculinity as entirely negative and problematic, and to present boys as ‘defective girls, damaged by default’ who need to be medicated, educated and socialised out of their masculinity. Whereas once manhood was celebrated in all its stiff-upper-lipped glory, it is now considered threatening. Lloyd welcomes the progress society has made in recent years, and he is happy that homosexuality is no longer so stigmatised. However, he warns that there is a danger that things have gone too far in the other direction, and that shame is now attached to masculinity, with heterosexual men, in particular, being made to feel guilty if they don’t frequently display a more feminine side to their personalities.

Faaaaaaaaaaascinating. Please tell me all about it, while I just curl up here and take a little nap.

Lloyd suggests today’s men’s movement is a response to strains of feminism that first appeared in the late 1970s – these strains were far more explicitly anti-men than pro-equality. He claims today’s feminists perpetuate the idea that women are oppressed and ‘refuse to let go of old arguments’ despite the changes that have taken place in the real world. Often, Lloyd argues, there are monetary incentives for feminist campaigning groups, such as the Fawcett Society, continuously to propagate an image of women as victims of a non-specific patriarchy.

Oh my goodness that is so interesting. Isn’t it?

Certainly it is not in the financial interests of groups like Hollaback and FCKH8 to question the facts promoted in their campaigns against sexism. Lloyd blames the media for unthinkingly picking up on such campaigns and escalating an anti-male sentiment. As a result, he says, feminism can seem like a ‘hate movement’ and men have not had a voice to challenge these newly dominant perceptions.

Huh. So Peter Lloyd thinks all men are sexist? He must think that, if he thinks campaigns against sexism equate to anti-male sentiment. But why would he think that? I don’t think that, and I’m not even an MRA.

Campaigning against racism isn’t anti-white, you know. Campaigning for LGBTQ rights isn’t anti-straight or anti-cis. Why would campaigning against sexism be anti-male? Why do people make these hateful false equivalencies? Saying “don’t keep pushing me down” does not equate to “it’s my turn to push you down now.”

Those promoting men’s rights through social media can appear to be the older brothers of lad culture: far less fun to be around but just as mindless in their instinctive reaction against a new social order that seems to have brought women, and feminism in particular, to the fore. Lloyd, however, is clearly intelligent and has thought these issues through. He’s unapologetic about lad culture, applauding ‘the utter enjoyment and raw expression of masculinity’ that it represents. If lad culture can be seen as a rebellion against feminism, it is, he argues, entirely unconscious and simply a manifestation of young men over[t]ly embracing their gender identity.

The way white people overtly embracing their white identity is only unconsciously a rebellion against anti-racism. Uh huh.

He hopes Stand By Your Manhood will provide a ‘reality check’ for today’s more militant feminists, and enable men to stop feeling like they have to apologise just for being themselves.

Does “just being themselves” mean catcalls on the street or groping on the bus or punching women who talk back?

So we’re trying to socialize the masculinity out of men – am I understanding that correctly? Hmm… Yet I still see men doing man-stuff all the time. I do not see that anything has changed – men are still men, apparently.

However, he warns that there is a danger that things have gone too far in the other direction, and that shame is now attached to masculinity, with heterosexual men, in particular, being made to feel guilty if they don’t frequently display a more feminine side to their personalities act like assholes.

I think if you’re writing (reduxing? plagiarising? assembling from your favourite bookmarked AVfM comments?) an entire book decrying how hetero blokes are the new Untouchables (the caste kind, not the Eliot Ness kind), it’s not feminism that’s your problem. It’s your ability to comprehend the English language.

Funny, among my feminist friends I feel no shame for being male. Is it me?

As a dude, I also experience a lack of shame for my gender and I’d consider most of my female friends (and probably most of my male friends) to be feminist to one degree or another. I think this is because real, actual mainstream feminists – as opposed to the Gynofascist Harpies from Space™ imagined by Lloyd and his ideological kin to be secretly controlling the boardrooms and cabinet rooms of every Western media corporation and government – bloody well know better than that.

Dudes like Peter Lloyd: either have that tropey dramatic Zoolander moment where you convince your dad you’re the man he should be proud of like the movies tell you, or stop caring what he or anyone else thinks. This fucking desperate fapping in public about what makes a man is goddamn embarrassing. Deal with your shit.

Um just a question: what exactly is “lad culture”? I mean is it getting drunk at pubs together and talking/joking about women and sex and pretending all your male friends are gay (include slapping on the back, hugs and occassional kisses here)?

Or is it just that with extra misogynist jokes, catcalls, added groping and other harassment of the female pubgoers? I mean isn’t it possible to have raunch male “fun with the lads” without going full asshole?

Once again, a man complaining about the way men are made to feel shame for being male makes me feel shame for the assumption that not being an asshole is just beyond my pre-programmed and unchangeable brain.

@=8)-DX, 14

I mean isn’t it possible to have raunch male “fun with the lads” without going full asshole?

No. That is illegal. The manpolice will come, confiscate your mancard, and throw you in manjail. After putting points on your manlicense, of course.
Not being an asshole: Not even once.

What IS this masculinity? “socialised out of their masculinity.”
Is it making messes? Is it pulling girls’ hair? Is it speaking out of turn in school? Those are the things people usually say “boys will be boys” about. But those are all bad things. (I mean, making a mess and not cleaning it up.)
Is it not having feelings? No, boys definitely have feelings. Is it not showing any feelings except anger? That’s bad too.

When I hear masculine, I think of physical appearance, having a scowl on your face, shouting a lot, pushing people around, and being physically strong. The parts that are sort of kind of being slightly discouraged by our society are the BAD parts.

What IS this masculinity? “socialised out of their masculinity.”
Is it making messes? Is it pulling girls’ hair? Is it speaking out of turn in school? Those are the things people usually say “boys will be boys” about. But those are all bad things. (I mean, making a mess and not cleaning it up.)
Is it not having feelings? No, boys definitely have feelings. Is it not showing any feelings except anger? That’s bad too.

When I hear masculine, I think of physical appearance, having a scowl on your face, shouting a lot, pushing people around, and being physically strong. The parts that are sort of kind of being slightly discouraged by our society are the BAD parts.

This is the problem. They speak in vague generalities, never giving solid examples. It’s just like when they say “male sexuality.” I’d like for them to give solid examples of these oh so important “masculine” traits they think are being attacked, and why they are actually positive and should be encouraged. Also, how exactly they are inseparable from “masculinity.”

The fact that “lad culture” and “locker room talk” and “banter” are usually invoked in conversations like this is pretty telling. As if language that demeans women or reduces us to sex objects is a natural manly trait that should not only be accepted, but also protected and encouraged by society.

If I’m looking at it the wrong way, please, somebody out explain it. What exactly are we attacking that needs to be protected? Give examples. Be specific.

I think what they are saying is that their (“male”) aggression towards women should be accepted because it’s natural and good. Why is it good? Because they like it. Same reason it’s good to kill ants outside — because you find it fun and you don’t give two craps about the suffering of the ants. Also they might say that it propagates the species more or something.

he warns that there is a danger that things have gone too far in the other direction, and that shame is now attached to masculinity, with heterosexual men, in particular, being made to feel guilty if they don’t frequently display a more feminine side to their personalities.

There sure is a lot of straw-shame being floated out there as something real, these days. Who are these hetero men feeling such shame, and why? Where are the women or gay men doing the shaming? I’ve yet to encounter any one of these mythical creatures. Things seem to be pretty consistently hunky dory over here in hetero-male land, from a systemic/societal standpoint.

I do love the sly backhanded insult that he slipped in there at the “feminine side.” Men being “made to feel guilty if they don’t frequently display a more feminine side” — HORRORS. Absolutely nothing could be worse than something feminine, amirite?! To be honest, the only time I’ve been pressured to feel guilt or shame is exactly whenever I “displayed a feminine side to my personality,” and the shamers were almost always other men. To which I say, “fuck all y’all, dudes. Get over it. I’ll knit if I want to.”

…I’m living in the real world and you can drink the Kool-Aid all you want. A lot of guys love the Kool-Aid. The sports world is Kool-Aid world…You can do anything if [you win]…What happens is they win and they go, “You know that girl? She’s my trophy. I deserve that girl. In fact, she don’t even want to be with me, but I don’t care. I’m going to take it.” What kind of mindset is that? Never never never never never should that ever be accepted. That’s not “code.” That’s Taliban. That’s ISIS.

What’s with calling peaceful advocates for a cause “militant”? There are people that kill others for religious reasons, for being in the ‘wrong‘ political party’s youth organization, for being women and burn abortion clinics. And people writing articles, voicing their opinion and refusing to socialize with jerks are “militant”? I hope these spokespeople for lad culture never have to face anyone actually militant.

I don’t feel any shame for being male but I do feel shame for some of the things I’ve done as a result of certain aspects of “lad culture.” For example:

During the later years of high school, I worked construction in the summer. On a few occasions, I whistled at women walking down the street. None of my co-workers joined in but none of them said anything either. It only took a few occasions for me to realize that I wasn’t getting the reactions I had seen in movies and on TV. The first couple of times, the women just ignored me but, the last time, I received a glare. I stopped doing it but, being male, I had the luxury of not having to think too deeply about it until I started really reflecting on gender issues many years later. I can’t change my past behaviour but I now always speak up when I see crap like that. Again, I have the luxury of being a pretty big person who isn’t likely to get assaulted for telling off a harasser/bully. *

I still see this behaviour in movies and on TV (especially in commercials). I wonder what’s going through the minds of the actress as they tee-hee about the attention (“gotta pay the bills, gotta pay the bills, …”). Same goes for the scenario where a man and woman are slow dancing, the man lowers his hands to her butt, and it’s the woman’s responsibility to move his hands back up, while bemusedly shaking her head. It’s mild sexual assault but it’s presented as being funny.

* Note: one of the best things I learned in Early Childhood Education is the impact of bystanders in bullying. The target has a limited ability to change the behaviour of a bully. Bystanders have a great deal of power to either reinforce or stop bullying, and it often just takes someone saying, “not cool.” That’s the real reason for labels like “White Knight”; bullies want to eliminate any support their targets have. I don’t care what gender, race, weight, etc. the target is, I fucking hate bullies. It’s a hard habit to break, but I also now try to say “target”, “recipient of {some_crap}”, or “person who was {some_crap}ed” instead of “victim.”

no sane man would care or be offended should a woman show up for work or hold a press conference dressed up in a shirt of barely dressed anime guys with guns

to which I responded “I guess I must know many insane men, since quite a few of the male people I know *would* be quite uncomfortable if a female (or male) co-worker showed up at the office “dressed up in a shirt of barely dressed anime guys with guns”.

And in return I was informed that The entire feminist political correctness agenda has really screwed up quite a few men. My condolences for your friends. It’s really quite a sad thing what’s happening.

no sane man would care or be offended should a woman show up for work or hold a press conference dressed up in a shirt of barely dressed anime guys with guns
…
The entire feminist political correctness agenda has really screwed up quite a few men. My condolences for your friends. It’s really quite a sad thing what’s happening.

I noticed a similar thing in a discussion on facebook. A guy asserted that the whole shirtstorm thing was set off by a catlady with a blog… I pointed to the vast number of comments by other scientists and teachers that were made before the blog being referred to, and linked the two astronomical association statements that I knew of at the time. Then the problem was that political correctness had infiltrated science. It’s almost as if their opposition to feminism was more important than being aware of what they’re talking about, isn’t it?

Saying “don’t keep pushing me down” does not equate to “it’s my turn to push you down now.”

It ain’t a deep nor deeply considered thesis or nothin’, but I’m again struck by the thought this is part of the problem, here…

It really does seem like this to me, sometimes: that the people most attached to these bizarre misconceptions of what is feminism are so intrinsically bound to hierarchy by their socialization thus far that they can’t really imagine anything else. If they don’t get to dominate, someone else does. Egalitarianism is this alien, incomprehensible thing, beyond their wildest imagining. I’m in charge or you are. Get along? Talk? Negotiate? What? What bizarre language is this you are speaking? Life is hierarchy, and I must know my rung, where you are, relative to it, or I can’t even deal.

no sane man would care or be offended should a woman show up for work or hold a press conference dressed up in a shirt of barely dressed anime guys with guns

That’s just utterly false — the woman’s boss, male or female, would promptly inform her that she was unprofessionally dressed. This happens to women as well as men (though not necessarily to equal degrees), and most of the companies I’ve worked for had rules of behavior, and said rules included at least some rules for attire, for both women and men. And even the places that allowed T-shirts still did not allow outlandish getup like what we saw in that infamous photograph.

@Raging Bee #34
I was astonished to find several different discussions where people who were promoting/defending (or even just citing examples of) the idea of appropriate professional workplace attire were being accused of prudishness. (Thought my irony meter would explode when Greta Christina was accused of being a prude.) At least one commenter (on another blog discussion) lamented the fact that there was insufficient opportunity for people to express their sexuality during working hours, and how unhealthy and stifling that was. I guess the fundamental disagreement is my “insane” idea that when we want to progress beyond “male executive ogles and/or fondles female secretary”, the next step is not to fill the workplace with equal opportunity ogling and fondling, but rather to reserve the workplace for *professional* behaviour and leave the ogling and fondling as off-hours recreational activities for those who consent to such things.

@AJ #33
Agreed – one of the real threats of losing the hierarchy is that transactions are no longer governed by the simple rules of how members of Group A deal with members of Group B. It becomes a matter of interpersonal interactions between human beings who are now expected to treat each other as equals.